Working as a freelance translator is both a business and a profession and successful translators make a substantial investment in three vital areas:

Professional Expertise

Translating needs a high level of expertise both linguistically and in terms of the subject matter. Your potential customers whether they are translation companies or direct clients will naturally expect proof of this. Both degree level qualifications and practical working experience in relevant fields are important. For example, the University of Salford offers a Master of Arts Diploma in Advance Studies for Translation and Interpreting, as do other universities.

In the UK, whilst there is no legal obligation for translators to join a professional body, potential customers will normally prefer to work with translators who are members of recognised professional organisations, such as the Chartered Institute of Linguists and the Institute of Translation & Interpreting (see sites of interest for more information).

EMILLE (Enabling Minority Language Engineering) is a 3 year EPSRC project at Lancaster University and Sheffield University, designed to build a 63 million word electronic corpus of South Asian languages, especially those spoken in the UK. This project is being supported by the Association of Translation Companies and its members. http://www.emille.lancs.ac.uk/